Fragile Brilliance: The Troubled Lives of Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson and Other Great Authors

The poet Emily Dickinson rarely left her home after her mid-thirties, and saw few people aside from her father. When visitors came, she was apt to disappear into her room, and those who wished to speak with her did so through a closed door. Rather than interact with neighborhood children, she would send down baskets of gingerbread from her second story window. In 1874, when she was forty-four, her father passed away. The funeral was held in the front room of their home; she did not attend, ...